PCAF Marks Significant Milestone with 250th Signatory, Growing Global Participation Fourfold in Three Years

The Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) welcomed today the commitment of BNP Paribas to measure and disclose financed emissions using the PCAF Global GHG Accounting and Reporting Standard for Financial Industry. BNP Paribas’ commitment marks a significant achievement for PCAF: the industry-led initiative has surpassed its goal of reaching 250 signatories by year-end 2022 with almost nine months to spare.

Guidehouse, which serves as PCAF’s secretariat, has worked closely with financial institutions all over the world to develop and facilitate the adoption of the first-of-its-kind Global GHG Accounting and Reporting Standard for the Financial Industry. The standard enables financial institutions to consistently measure and disclose the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of their loans and investments.

“From local to global to local: from a Dutch financial initiative in 2015 to a global launch in 2019, 250 financial institutions are now collaborating at a local level. Helping each other to implement and improve the measurement and disclosure of Scope 3 emissions is key to the success of PCAF. It's amazing to see the growth of signatories from all regions and all types of financial institutions and the strengths of collaboration”, says Giel Linthorst, Executive Director of PCAF and Director at Guidehouse.

PCAF has undergone a significant transformation since it launched globally in September 2019. At that time, PCAF had only 55 signatories which collectively represented just under $4 trillion in total financial assets. This initial group of pioneers consisted largely of PCAF’s original Dutch founders and smaller values-based banks. Today, 30 months later, PCAF has increased its number of signatories by 350% to over 250 financial institutions globally, representing more than $71 trillion in total financial assets. PCAF’s signatories are diverse in not only their geography and size, but also their type: in addition to banks, the partnership consists of asset managers, asset owners, insurers, private equity firms, and more. Of these 250+ signatories, 69 financial institutions representing $33 trillion have already disclosed their financed emissions using the PCAF Standard at least once.

PCAF achieved by a sizeable margin its goal, set in 2020, to grow the partnership to over 250 participating financial institutions by year-end 2022. As a next step, the PCAF Steering Committee is developing a new growth strategy to be launched in 2022. 

Guidehouse is uniquely positioned at the crossroads of this transition to help our clients overcome unprecedented challenges across the ESG landscape. We deliver integrated capabilities to help organizations develop solutions that span the E, the S, and the G.

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